Bug: Inconsistent behaviour about inline markup

[c.buhtz@posteo.jp]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended by design. Please point to the 
correct documentation if there is one.
I'm also not sure if Orgmode is the related component here or if there 
is any other?

What I describe is in the context of auto-formating markup in orgmode. 
When you type "=verb=" or "~code~" the first and last character 
disappears but the text gets another color. In GUI mode also "/" and "*" 
will disapear and make the word italic or bold.

What characters are allowed in front of the beginning inline marker 
("=", "~", "/", "*", etc) and after the ending marker.
Allowed may not be the correct word. With which characters is Orgmode 
still able to recognize the markup right.

Examples (the " are not part of the data)

  - "=verb=" -> OK, because line beginning and ending are allowed
  - "(=verb=)" -> OK
  - " =verb=}" -> OK. Space/blank and curly bracket allowed

- "=verb=\" -> OK. Backslash at the end.
- "\=verb=" -> BAD. Backslash in the beginning not allowed. No 
formatting happens.
- ")=verb=(" -> BAD. "inverted" brackets not allowed.
- "=verb=." ->OK. Dot at the end.
- ".=verb=" -> BAD. Dot at the beginning.

IMHO there shouldn't be a difference in the allowed characters in front 
of the beginning inline marker (the "=" here in the example) and the one 
after the ending inline marker.

First of all it would help me if this is documented somewhere.

Second it would improve my (regex) code (which have to parse such 
org-markup) and its maintainability if allowed characters would be 
uniform/consistent.

Kind
Christian